A Study On The Current Situation And Problems Of The Community Cultural Activity Room

To strengthen the community cultural construction is not only the logical result of in-depth reform of social system, but the important content of the development of socialist culture. Since the reform and opening-up, rapid developments in the city have expanded the scope of human activities; however, due to the great heterogeneity and mobility in the city, a closed "small society" has inevitably come into being with the increased socialization, in which residents, as if strangers, hardly communicate with each other. Many Chinese and overseas scholars have noted that the atomization of urban household has brought about such urban diseases as interpersonal loneliness, alienation and superficialness. One of the good treatments for these diseases is to carry out community cultural activities, connecting residents together by means of culture and enhancing each one's sense of identity and belonging. Therefore, cultural construction has flourished and become a critical part of community building in recent years.The CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee and the Shanghai Municipal Government have been always attaching much importance to the cultural construction, especially to the construction of public cultural infrastructure facilities. An increasing number of libraries, museums, memorials, galleries, culture centers and stadiums have been opened to the public for the sake of public welfare in the past years. Considering that everyone prefers to take part in cultural and sports activities nearby since modern people get busier and busier at work and aging groups have increased a lot in Shanghai, the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and the Shanghai Municipal Government have started building community cultural centers, advancing the concept of "participating in community culture and sports activities nearby". By the end of 2009, every community in the Shanghai city has set up standardized community cultural activity center, which helps to better carry out community cultural activities. As one of Shanghai's urban centers, Shanghai Xuhui District, with profound historical ground and rapid economic growth, keeps ahead on education, hygiene, culture, etc. in the whole city. The Xuhui District Government has been always laying stress on the community cultural construction and for the convenience of residents participating in cultural and sports activities, it proposed a concept of "15-minute cultural circle" in 2003, which means to set up in every community (neighborhood committee) a neighborhood cultural activity room, where some common cultural and sports activities are carried out to enrich people's life.This paper holds that we must seek a breakthrough in the development of cultural undertakings in order to improve the current bottleneck we have been faced with. Through visiting, studying and contrasting, we can begin with the study of the neighborhood cultural activity room which has the closest relationship with residents and has the most extensive coverage, and, by repositioning the function of activity room and re-constructing its facilities, inspire grass-roots'active participation in community building, aimed at creating a harmonious community atmosphere. Meanwhile, by animating the primary-level culture and improving the residents'life through reconstruction of the activity room, we can thereby set up a stage of community culture and a platform of cultural communication, form a development track of "residents supporting the construction of cultural industry; cultural industry rewarding cultural undertakings; cultural undertakings satisfying residents'cultural needs", and finally come to a harmonious situation in which all residents are able to enjoy the real cultural welfare.This paper, by studying the community neighborhood activity rooms in Shanghai Xuhui District with some relevant project surveys in the Cultural Affairs Department of Xuhui District and in the Xuhui District Government Office where the author has worked, argues how the activity room should play its role in constructing the "15-minute cultural circle", that is, what public cultural services should be provided, and advances the thought of standardizing the activity room. Taking it as a starting point, this paper also conducts an overall analysis of the problems in the community cultural construction, lists some major issues to be settled and puts forward many practical and effective comments and suggestions.